Re-Reading Revelation, Lecture # 12: The Seven Trumpets

The seven trumpets are introduced by a temple scene (8:2-5). People are praying. Prayer is a stance of dependence and need. If we construe it as human need, it shows God helping the weak earthly signal, amplifying it on the way. God is on the believer's side in the conflict, and he is about to give another revelation: the seven trumpets (8:6-11: 19). The images here, especially in the fifth (9:1-11) and the sixth trumpet (9: 12-21), are overwrought, bizarre, ever worsening representations of a demonic reality. At the heart of the demonic reality is the star that had fallen from heaven to earth (9:1-2), whose activity is described (9:3-8) and who is finally named (9: 11). He is called Abbadon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek: He is the Destroyer, not just a destroyer but the original and ultimate destroyer. The demonic character of the figure is unmistakable, and the activity described captures the reality of evil in language adequate even for the unprecedented evil of the twentieth century. Should the trumpets be understood as punitive action initiated by God? This is the majority view, but it is spectacularly off the mark. The text fairly shouts that the trumpet calamities are NOT the work of God. Failure to see this has far-reaching consequences: it makes us send the bill for the calamities in the world to the wrong address.